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Gamers for Net Neutrality

So I thought this was interesting. There's a new coalition with a sizable constituency working on the net neutrality issue: Gamers for Net Neutrality.

Gamers aren't the most obvious constituency out there, but there are millions of gamers in America, all of whom have a stake in this fight. The average age of a gamer in America is something like 35 - so this isn't just about high school kids and college slackers. There's a lot of voting power there - particularly with consoles like the Wii expanding the user base.

Here's a little video they're using to promote their effort. As a Halo 3 player myself, it's funny (if a little cheesy).


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April 3rd, 2008 8:17am
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awesome.

Submitted by KevinH on Thu, 2008-04-03 12:43.

Net Neutrality should be a major issue for any MMO, XBox Live or PS3 players. It would be cool to see people try to create gamer-centric letter writing, petition, or voter reg tools through consoles or actually within games.

Well

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Fri, 2008-04-04 21:07.

I agree this is cool. And I agree that this could/should be a big issue for gamers.

But.

I find it unlikely that consumer-level gamers are likely to feel the pain here. I mean, is XBOX live really ever going to be anything but a teir 1 app? Would Blizzard not go along with payola to keep WoW jumpin? The real danger of this issue is that as long as people are content to be consumers and not producers or hosts of content -- which is where most gaming is situated -- they're unlikely to ever feel the pinch except perhaps in some increased service fees.

That said, the whole "internet democracy" thing should be a good cultural fit, and organizing gamers as a constituency makes good sense.